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"Minister for Health Simon Harris and Minister of State for Communities and the National Drugs Strategy, Catherine Byrne today (Tuesday) welcomed the Government’s decision to approve the publication of the Misuse of Drugs (Supervised Injecting Facilities) Bill 2017.
"The Bill, which was approved by Cabinet at its meeting this morning, will allow the Minister for Health to issue a licence, with conditions, to operate a supervised injecting facility.

Alternative Analysis of the Relative Risk from MDMA Use: "Nutt et al. (2007) attempted to compare the relative dangers of the main types of psychosocial drug, using a series of subjective rating scales. Heroin and cocaine were graded as the two most harmful drugs, whereas Ecstasy/MDMA emerged as one of the least harmful (18th out of 20). Unfortunately, it was unclear how this low harm rating score for Ecstasy/MDMA was given, as they cited no empirical research studies or reviews. Instead, Nutt et al.

Prevalence of HIV Among Injection Drug Users in Australia: "The prevalence of HIV among people who inject drugs in Australia has remained low at 2.1% or less since 1995. The prevalence of HIV in 2011 was 1.2% (Figure 46). HCV prevalence among this group was much higher at 61% to 62% from 2005 to 2008, however this figure was lower at 53% 2011 (Figure 46) (Iversen and Maher, 2012)."

Cost Savings from Syringe Exchange in Australia:"In Australia the [Needle and Syringe] Program is the single most important and cost-effective strategy in reducing drug-related harms among IDUs. Australian Governments invested $130 million in NSPs between 1991 and 2000 resulting in the prevention of an estimated 25,000 HIV infections and 21,000 HCV infections, with savings from avoided treatment costs of up to $7.8 billion (Health Outcomes International et al., 2002). In the decade 2000-2009, the gross funding for NSPs was $243 million.

Opiate Overdose Prevention and Treatment: Naloxone (Note: For an excellent training video and other materials regarding Naloxone and overdose prevention, check out this resource from the Chicago Recovery Alliance, http://www.anypositivechange.o....)

"This pilot trial is the first in North America to prospectively evaluate a program of naloxone distribution to IDUs to prevent heroin overdose death. After an 8-hour training, our study participants' knowledge of heroin overdose prevention and management increased, and they reported successful resuscitations during 20 heroin overdose events. All victims were reported to have been unresponsive, cyanotic, or not breathing, but all survived.